Unconscious Cognitions and Emotion: The Bridge Between Subliminal Stimuli and Its Influence on Emotion  Rishit Das , Juliana Castillo (Stanford Online High School, Hong Kong, Hong Kong)   C21

There is a complex interrelationship between emotions and the mind-body connection, which is currently being empirically studied through various theories of emotion and other neuroscientific paradigms. However, these theories do not fully mediate what actually influences emotion, as they fall short of a sufficient explanation of how the conscious and unconscious mind work in flux to influence the emergence of emotion. This research study endeavors to uncover the effects of qualia on both adaptive and maladaptive tendencies of thoughts, using the James-Lange, Schachter-Singer, and the Lazarus theories of emotions to holistically approach an understanding of the flux between unconscious and conscious processes and in turn, develop a framework for how the former affects one?s emotions. By manipulating our inherent introspective recognitional process for experiencing stimuli, the research will study how a subject's inability to properly access their phenomenal representation influences the very fabric of feeling emotion. Fundamentally, we aim to uncover how the unconscious mind influences emotion by understanding if either i) emotion relies implicitly on perception, thought and memory, but we cannot access of these factors, *or* ii) we're fully aware of what we're perceiving, thinking and recalling, but cannot accumulate and be aware of the emotions these processes give rise to.